Last week, Zuckerberg responded to the growing controversy sparked by a Gizmodo report that quoted an anonymous former Facebook worker who said curators for the social network’s Trending news section suppressed news from conservative sources. Zuckerberg said the company had not found evidence supporting the accusations, which had attracted the attention of at least one conservative lawmaker. He also mentioned he would seek to talk with conservatives about the issue.

In addition, Joel Kaplan, Facebook’s vice president for U.S. public policy, sought to do damage control over the weekend. In a Facebook post, Kaplan trotted out the social network’s conservative credentials, saying the issue “especially matters” to him because he’s a Republican and a conservative. He is a former member of President George W. Bush’s White House staff.

“In the U.S., there are an equal number of conservatives and liberals using our platform, and conservatives are just as engaged — if not more so,” Kaplan wrote. “Conservative groups are thriving on Facebook, with exceptionally high levels of engagement.”

Kaplan also noted that GOP presidential candidates Donald Trump and Ben Carson “had the biggest presences on Facebook of all the candidates from either party.” He also mentioned that Ted Cruz, Paul Ryan and Newt Gingrich are regular, active users of Facebook, and pointed out that conservative media outlets and personalities including Beck have millions of fans on the social network.

Last week, Recode noted that other Facebook executives are from conservative circles, including Facebook’s head of global politics and government outreach, Katie Harbath, who worked on Rudy Giulani’s 2008 presidential bid and the Republican National Committee, and Greg Maurer, aide to former House Speaker John Boehner, who is Facebook’s director of public policy.

In a post on Facebook over the weekend, Beck said the social network has “had the same problem that many in media and Silicon Valley face: suppression of conservative voices and ideas.” He also said: “While they are a private business and I support their right to run it any way they desire without government interference, it would be wonderful if a tool like face book [sic] INDEPENDENTLY CHOSE to hold up Freedom of speech and freedom of association as a corporate principle.”

Zuckerberg is going to tell Beck that he intends to let a billion more people to come over and trash it.http://www.fwd.us

Mark Metzler

There is no ‘suppression’ of conservative voices on social media. Rather, right-wing propagandists like Beck and Trump, can only thrive on broadcast media, where very few people have a chance to challenge their misstatements of facts.

On the internet, anyone with a third grade education, can challenge people like Trump, who mouth insidious lies, concocted by think-tanks….. of, by, and for the oil industry…..that global warming is a hoax.

For, by the time they have graduated from grade school….all students have heard about “Science”. NASA did not put men on the moon, via a hoax. And…no…the moon is not made of green cheese, as climate-denying spinmeisters, like Beck and Trump, insist. So, when NASA, as well as all of the other scientific organizations in the world tell us that global warming is real….anyone with integrity and an education, can stand up and challenge their deluded fantasies.

List of worldwide scientific organizations

The following page lists the nearly 200 worldwide scientific
organizations that hold the position that climate change has been caused
by human action.